Flowers of Skin and Bone
by veronikat
Summary: Promise him that you are not needy, and that there is little that makes you afraid, that makes you truly anxious. Tell him that you will not be possessive of him. But, feel possessive and afraid and needy. Brendan B. one-shots may add more in the future


_hi-hi! _

_Here is four little one-shots of Brendan Brady, some of which are quasi-canon, some of which are not. They may have repeating themes, they may not make sense 100% of the time. But hopefully you enjoy reading them as much as I did writing them ! _

_I sometimes attempt to write accents phonetically. I sometimes (read: never) succeed at this. But just go with me on this ~_

* * *

Promise him that you are not needy, and that there is little that makes you afraid, that makes you truly anxious. Tell him that you will not be possessive of him. But, feel possessive and afraid and needy.

Search for him in desperation in the hospital, a labyrinth of corridors in eggshell white and blue, out of breath and out of control of your voice when you are calling his name. Calling out to find any person who knows his name, who can take you too him. Pitch too high, throat too choked, heart beating hardest for every minute that passes and still does not bring you closer - feels like minutes squandered, wasted.

Steven Hay -

_why?_

Because the world is no longer yours.

It never was, in actual fact, but there was an idea of power - the absolute need for it - a seed that was planted in your brain when you were just nine, and it grew into a wild crush of weeds. Roots that clogged deep and tight into your spine, that you felt right through to your fingertips when you stretched them out.

It was you, the important parts of yourself. Power and independence and _walls_, keeping those walls good and tall and _strong_.

And then Steven Hay is in your life, and he's telling you you've been a fool.

_that's why_

He isn't afraid to speak in front of you, he finds his words and he says them loud and clear, like ringing bells between your ears. He dares to breathe, because you can pay him for ownership of his bodies autonomy, but his mind is his own, and how he chooses to calculate his breathing is as well - and on the exhale he explains that the past cannot hurt you. You can't hide behind it, either.

_it all breaks away as dust, can't do nowt' to ya_, he says, and he tells you to look forward for once, to be grown up for once.

You didn't believe him, you swore that you couldn't, because nothing could be that simple.

And then Steven Hay is found broken on cement, bleeding out his own likeness, and he is pieced together again. Nourished through a drip-line and kept warm in blankets, oxygen in a steel canister Then, dirt is shifting loose through gaps in your fingers, and your spine shivers, your lungs inhale - and it feels like your brain is breathing, too, clear and light and long and loud, and it exhales so smoothly.

_you make me understand, _

_the world can be good _

_why? _

You sit beside his bed, watching his chest rise when his oxygen compresses, your hands trembling over an iron safety bar. You are exhausted, and you aren't used to this new ease of tension in your muscles, and you're having trouble compensating. Still, you cry when you see him, and now you think you know why.

"I'll give you reason, if you let me, one day."

* * *

You hold him by his wrist, your fingers wrapped around the bony joint in a completed circle, fingernails scraping on thin skin. Your breath barely comes to you, it almost doesn't pass your lips, and after all the flames of the morning it feels that there is nothing left to your tongue but cool ashes and words that sound without conviction. Exhaustion hits you. Desperation shores against your muscles, pulling them tight and tense as hot tuned wires.

There's a seed there with all the potential it needs to grow again, and you think if he can see it in your open mouth, the sharp rises and falls of your chest, the strains of your knuckles that bleaches them pale and white - then you think it could grow again quite quickly.

For hours, nothing but quiet fell, but these feelings will grow like weeds between where you and him stand. You hold him tightly, eyes peeling off to the ceiling and pupils dilating widely open, a circle stretched to breaking underneath fluorescent light.

_Oh, Lord _

_Don't look at him _

You will want to kiss him, again, if he lets it happen and even if he does not.

You will want to smooth his hair, to smear the moisture from his thick, matted eye lashes. You will want to drag the flat pad of your thumb across the bruise patterning on his cheek until the pull of skin on skin has wiped it clear, again.

But he wants you to use words, first. He pulls back against the hand on his wrist in an opposite momentum, he stairs at you too directly, his eyes too wide. He doesn't understand how Devils hold your tongue when you are close to things you want - close to daring to breath - how it feels when the holes in your soul from childhood are reopening, like the tearing of nerve endings from muscle; but you think about what he would do even if he knew.

_Steven Hay_ - he would cry about it, just the once. He would drink, double vodka shots, while his skin was still flushed and his fingers trembling. He would frown and say, _'we've got to just look ahead, hadn't we, it's all in the past - breaks apart as dust, innit? we've got to just -' _

Someone stands in your way and Steven says to do what you must, to the last beat of your heart, just do what you must.

_this is what you must, __absolutely_

"Why're you 'ere."

_Because_ - he wasn't in your way nearly enough. Because_, I fucking love you, alright. _

_that's been it, every reason for everything_

You breathe out slowly, constricted against pressed lips and a tight throat, and then suddenly you exhale all at once. Eyes up at the ceiling. You're a Catholic man, but you're not convinced of Heaven and Hell as layers that twist in an infinite, circling game of snakes and ladders - but you look at the popcorn texture and you bend your words into prayer, asking - if there's anybody up there with power to give you more than the visions that you've been having - then, _please, God_ - it sounds a lot like begging.

A sharp intake of breath again, rolling back on your feet, eyes leveling again on him. You are going to count to three, and then -

_please, God_

"Because I... I want tha' bes' for you-"

"The best for me, right, I know that."

He twists his wrists in your hand, looks bitter and over saturated. You grab his other wrist and reel in close, list towards him, like you're just a bit of flotsam and he's the force of gravity, the orbit that keeps you situated. Here's the part that always gets you, when he's so mad and so in love but feeling unreciprocated, lonely, and you're screaming out at him from inside your mind until your lips are blue. You look at him earnestly, _have you found me out yet? _And you almost laugh, it's a thing so sad and so ridiculous.

You've both wasted so much precious time.

"I love you."

In your hands he jerks back. In his lungs oxygen stalls. His eyes flicker at the ground. "You what?" He whispers, voice rough.

_i fucking love you, okay. did i make sense?_

* * *

Your fingers are trembling, held over the metal safety bar on the side of his bed, cold and solid and in the way. The levy against which a bitter hurt is shoring, against which your desperation is unable to pass, winding your hands tight around it as you feel the words fall further off the back of your tongue. Everything goes all wrong. You've squandered life that he gave you, days that no longer felt like a chore to breathe through, and he had squandered just as much, almost more.

He had done the math, calculated for how much longer he could keep his inhales and exhales going in perfect order, and then he had picked a night. He had a plan to slip away, and he just picked the time.

And the feeling's in this room aren't natural, it isn't love or something bold like that, it isn't even fear - it's nothing you can give a name too, but you think, it starts somewhere between Steven's broken clavicle and shattered ankle. It's more the sawdust of love, the dryness of your throat when you dare not to breath or swallow, it's solitude that you feel apathetical towards, accepting, because there was no good reason not to be accepting.

It swells, fills the room as a mist, and it takes away the better parts of yourself.

You are left unable to speak, because every word you want to use is a curse, is hurried and loud and wrong. Everything is wrong.

_Fucking selfish, that's what you are_

_And I do love you_

* * *

It's like a muscle reflex.

He sits for hours and does nothing but read, the flat pad of his thumb stained in the smell and the ink and that dry paper feeling, and he looks like he would stay there forever - but he becomes erratic, too, like he can't at the same time coexist with what is being taught to him.

He tells you about how the son cannot suffer for the inequity of the father, nor the father for the inequity of the son, and he sounds very proud, very pleased.

"I learnt that," he says, and he looks very young.

It's something that he has never let show before, this face - a look of really wanting to believe, really wanting this all to have more meaning than just a handed down faith, a thing that was his father's, just nothing - but nothing grew up with him and filled him full. The things that make up Brendan Seamus Brady, things of celluloid and ego and scripture. He laughs at this, like he's softened enough over time not to be offended at the humor in his life anymore, and he looks at you and he says, "nothing."

* * *

_thank you :3_


End file.
